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Anticipating anxiety speeds aging process

Anticipating anxiety speeds aging process Living Longer, Worth Noting No Responses »

Feb 222012

The ability to anticipate future events allows us to plan and exert control over our lives, but it may also contribute to stress-related increased risk for the diseases of aging, according to a study by UCSF researchers.

In a study of 50 women, about half of them caring for relatives with dementia, the psychologists found that those most threatened by the anticipation of stressful tasks in the laboratory and through public speaking and solving math problems, looked older at the cellular level. The researchers assessed cellular age by measuring telomeres, which are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. Short telomeres index older cellular age and are associated with increased risk for a host of chronic diseases of aging, including cancer, heart disease and stroke.

“We are getting closer to understanding how chronic stress translates into the present moment,” said Elissa Epel, PhD, an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and a lead investigator on the study. “As stress researchers, we try to examine the psychological process of how people respond to a stressful event and how that impacts their neurobiology and cellular health. And we’re making some strides in that.”

The researchers also found evidence that caregivers anticipated more threat than non-caregivers when told that they would be asked to perform the same public speaking and math tasks. This tendency to anticipate more threat put them at increased risk for short telomeres. Based on that, the researchers propose that higher levels of anticipated threat in daily life may promote cellular aging in chronically stressed individuals.

“How you respond to a brief stressful experience in the laboratory may reveal a lot about how you respond to stressful experiences in your daily life,” said Aoife O’Donovan, PhD, a Society in Science: Branco Weiss Fellow at UCSF and the study’s lead author. “Our findings are preliminary for now, but they suggest that the major forms of stress in your life may influence how your respond to more minor forms of stress, such as losing your keys, getting stuck in traffic or leading a meeting at work. Our goal is to gain better understanding of how psychological stress promotes biological aging so that we can design targeted interventions that reduce risk for disease in stressed individuals. We now have preliminary evidence that higher anticipatory threat perception may be one such mechanism.”

The study will be published in the May issue of the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

Research on telomeres, and the enzyme that makes them, was pioneered by three Americans, including UCSF molecular biologist and co-author on this manuscript Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, who co-discovered the telomerase enzyme in 1985. The scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for this work.

Don’t go back, in relationships

Don’t go back, in relationships News, Relationship No Responses »

Feb 222012

Before renewing romance with an ex, it may be better to move on to the next, relationship expert says.

Amber Vennum, assistant professor of family studies and human services at Kansas State University, is studying couples in cyclical relationships — the term used for a couple who breaks up and then gets back together. She is looking at why couples reunite and how it affects the relationship.

“There has been very little research on this topic, but it turns out that cyclical relationships are quite prevalent,” Vennum said. “With college-age kids, about 40 percent are currently in a relationship where they have broken up and then have gotten back together. That’s shocking, especially when you factor in the outcomes of being in a cyclical relationship.”

For her research, Vennum analyzed information that cyclical and noncyclical couples gave about their relationship and its characteristics. The information was evaluated using the relationship deciding scale, or RDS, which assesses relationship qualities and accurately predicts what the relationship will be like 14 weeks into the future.

While movies, books and TV shows may portray rekindling a relationship as romantic, Vennum found that the results of getting back together were less than desirable.

Findings showed that couples in a cyclical relationship tended to be more impulsive about major relationship transitions — like moving in together, buying a pet together or having a child together — than those not in a cyclical relationship. As a result, the couples in cyclical relationships tended to be less satisfied with their partner; had worse communication; made more decisions that negatively affected the relationship; had lower self-esteem; and had a higher uncertainty about their future together.

“The idea is that because people aren’t making explicit commitments to the relationship, they are less likely to engage in pro-relationship behaviors, such as discussing the state of the relationship or making sacrifices for their partner,” Vennum said. “The thought is that, ‘I’m not committed to you, why would I work very hard for you?’”

The findings are in line with those from the only other U.S. research team to study cyclical couples, according to Vennum. That team studied the breakup strategies used by couples in cyclical relationships and their reasons for reuniting. The researchers found that couples said they got back together because they believed their partner had changed for the better or that communications had improved — but the results indicated otherwise. Additionally, other couples stated that the relationship continued because it was unclear if they had actually ended their romance.

“When cyclical couples break up, they tend to be ambiguous about ending the relationship,” Vennum said. “So it can be unclear to one or both partners if they broke up and why they broke up, which leads to them continuing the romantic relationship. Other times the breakup won’t be unilateral, so one person pursues the other until they get back together.”

Vennum also looked at the effect of premarital cyclicality on marriages.

She found that couples who were cyclical prior to marriage were more uncertain about getting married and began their marriages with lower satisfaction and higher conflict than noncyclical couples. Over time, satisfaction with the marriage continued to decrease for cyclical couples. Additionally, spouses who were cyclical before marriage were also more likely to experience a trial separation during the first three years of marriage.

“It really shows that those patterns of cyclicality tend to repeat,” Vennum said. “If you tend to be cyclical while dating, you tend to be cyclical while married. The more you are cyclical, the more your relationship quality tends to decrease and that creates a lack of trust and uncertainty about the future of the relationship, perpetuating the pattern.”

Vennum is currently putting together her findings for publication. She also has advice for couples who have broken up.
“Don’t get back together,” she said. “Study after study shows that when our relationships are poor, we don’t function well. If it seems necessary to get back together, make sure the decision is carefully considered by both people and that specific efforts are made to establish clarity.”

Source: Kansas State University

Caffeine and breast feeding – limit your intake.

Caffeine and breast feeding – limit your intake. Caffeine, Mothering, Worth Noting No Responses »

Feb 212012

Babies are not able to metabolize or excrete caffeine very well, so a breastfeeding mother’s consumption of caffeine may lead to caffeine accumulation and symptoms such as wakefulness and irritability, according to an interview with expert Ruth Lawrence, MD, published in Journal of Caffeine Research, a peer-reviewed journal.

Caffeine is found in a wide range of products in addition to coffee, tea, and chocolate, including soft drinks, sports drinks, and some over-the-counter medications.

In a provocative discussion with Dr. Ruth Lawrence, Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Jack E. James, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Caffeine Research, asks a variety of probing questions. Is there a safe level of caffeine intake while breastfeeding? Are there potential long-term effects of caffeine exposure on development and intellect? Can a baby whose mother consumed caffeine during pregnancy experience withdrawal if she then abstains from caffeine while breastfeeding? Dr. Lawrence bases her responses on the scientific and medical evidence related to caffeine exposure in breastfed babies, and distinguishes between what is and what is not well understood in this developing field of study.

“Usually a mother, particularly if she is breastfeeding, is cautioned to limit her caffeine intake,” says Dr. Lawrence, who is Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Breastfeeding Medicine. After giving birth, mothers “should consume all things in moderation and try to avoid the excesses that might really add up to a lot of caffeine.”

Source: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc

Babies with colic, mothers with migraine – what’s the link?

Babies with colic, mothers with migraine – what’s the link? Mothering, News No Responses »

Feb 212012

A study of mothers and their young babies has shown that mothers who suffer migraine headaches are more than twice as likely to have babies with colic than mothers without a history of migraine say neurologists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The work raises the question of whether colic may be an early symptom of migraine and therefore whether reducing stimulation may help just as reducing light and noise can alleviate migraine pain. That is significant because excessive crying is one of the most common triggers for shaken baby syndrome, which can cause death, brain damage and severe disability.

“If we can understand what is making the babies cry, we may be able to protect them from this very dangerous outcome,” said Amy Gelfand, MD, a child neurologist with the Headache Center at UCSF who will present the findings at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting, which takes place in New Orleans in April.

Colic, or excessive crying in an otherwise healthy infant, has long been associated with gastrointestinal problems—presumably caused by something the baby ate. However, despite more than 50 years of research, no definitive link has been proven between infant colic and gastrointestinal problems. Babies who are fed solely breast milk are as likely to have colic as those fed formula, and giving colicky babies medication for gas does not help.

“We’ve known about colic for a really long time,” Gelfand said, “but despite this fact, no one really knows why these babies are crying.”

In the UCSF study, Gelfand and her colleagues surveyed 154 new mothers bringing their infants to the pediatrician for routine check ups at two months, the age when colicky crying typically peaks. The mothers were surveyed about their babies’ crying patterns and their own history of migraine, and those responses were analyzed to make sure the reported crying did indeed fit the clinical definition of colic.

Mothers who suffered migraines were found to be two-and-a-half times more likely to have colicky babies. Overall, 29 percent of infants whose mothers had migraines had colic compared to 11 percent of babies whose mothers did not have migraines.

Gelfand and her colleagues believe colic may be an early manifestation of a set of conditions known as childhood periodic syndromes, believed to be precursors to migraine headaches later in life.

Babies with colic may be more sensitive to stimuli in their environment just as are migraine sufferers. They may have more difficulty coping with the onslaught of new stimuli after birth as they are thrust from the dark, warm, muffled life inside the womb into a world that is bright, cold, noisy and filled with touchy hands and bouncy knees.

The UCSF team next plans to study a group of colicky babies over the course of their childhood to see if they develop other childhood periodic syndromes, such as abdominal migraine.

Source: University of California – San Francisco

Children know what’s fair

Children know what’s fair Behaviour, Childhood, News No Responses »

Feb 212012

“That’s not fair!” It’s a common playground complaint. But how early do children acquire this sense of fairness? Before they’re 2, says a new study. “We found that 19- and 21-month-old infants have a general expectation of fairness, and they can apply it appropriately to different situations,” says University of Illinois psychology graduate student Stephanie Sloane, who conducted the study with UI’s Renée Baillargeon and David Premack of the University of Pennsylvania. The findings appear in Psychological Science.

In each of two experiments, babies watched live scenarios unfold. In the first, 19-month-olds saw two giraffe puppets dance around at the back of a stage. An experimenter arrived with two toys on a tray and said, “I have toys!” “Yay!” said the giraffes. Then the experimenter gave one toy to each giraffe or both to one of them. The infants were timed gazing at the scene until they lost interest. Longer looking times indicated that something was odd—unexpected—to the baby. In this experiment, three-quarters of the infants looked longer when one giraffe got both toys.

In the second experiment, two women faced each other with a pile of small toys between them and an empty plastic box in front of each of them. An experimenter said, “Wow! Look at all these toys. It’s time to clean them up.” In one scenario, one woman dutifully put the toys away, while the other kept playing—but the experimenter gave a reward to both the worker and the slacker. In another scenario, both women put the toys away and both got a reward. The observing 21-month-old infants looked reliably longer when the worker and the slacker were rewarded equally.

“We think children are born with a skeleton of general expectations about fairness,” explains Sloane, “and these principles and concepts get shaped in different ways depending on the culture and the environment they’re brought up in.” Some cultures value sharing more than others, but the ideas that resources should be equally distributed and rewards allocated according to effort are innate and universal.

Other survival instincts can intervene. Self-interest is one, as is loyalty to the in-group—your family, your tribe, your team. It’s much harder to abide by that abstract sense of fairness when you want all the cookies—or your team is hungry. That’s why children need reminders to share and practice in the discipline of doing the right thing in spite of their desires.

Still, says Sloane, “helping children behave more morally may not be as hard as it would be if they didn’t have that skeleton of expectations.”

This innate moral sense might also explain the power of early trauma, Sloane says. Aside from fairness, research has shown that small children expect people not to harm others and to help others in distress. “If they witness events that violate those expectations in extreme ways, it could explain why these events have such negative and enduring consequences.”

Source: Association for Psychological Science.

Texting slows acceptance of new words

Texting slows acceptance of new words Communication, News No Responses »

Feb 182012

Research designed to understand the effect of text messaging on language found that texting has a negative impact on people’s linguistic ability to interpret and accept words. The study, conducted by Joan Lee for her master’s thesis in linguistics, revealed that those who texted more were less accepting of new words. On the other hand, those who read more traditional print media such as books, magazines, and newspapers were more accepting of the same words.

The study asked university students about their reading habits, including text messaging, and presented them with a range of words both real and fictitious.

“Our assumption about text messaging is that it encourages unconstrained language. But the study found this to be a myth,” says Lee. “The people who accepted more words did so because they were better able to interpret the meaning of the word, or tolerate the word, even if they didn’t recognize the word. Students who reported texting more rejected more words instead of acknowledging them as possible words.”

Lee suggests that reading traditional print media exposes people to variety and creativity in language that is not found in the colloquial peer-to-peer text messaging used among youth or ‘generation text’. She says reading encourages flexibility in language use and tolerance of different words. It helps readers to develop skills that allow them to generate interpretable readings of new or unusual words.

“In contrast, texting is associated with rigid linguistic constraints which caused students to reject many of the words in the study,” says Lee. “This was surprising because there are many unusual spellings or “textisms” such as “LOL” in text messaging language.”

Lee says that for texters, word frequency is an important factor in the acceptability of words.

“Textisms represent real words which are commonly known among people who text,” she says. “Many of the words presented in the study are not commonly known and were not acceptable to the participants in the study who texted more or read less traditional print media.”

Source: University of Calgary

‘Links and Listen’ for Tony Delroy Night Life February 17

‘Links and Listen’ for Tony Delroy Night Life February 17 Audio No Responses »

Feb 172012

Listen to NewsUCanUse with Tony Delroy on ABC Radio’s Night Life February 17

Patients can be better researched than GP’s now via the web and not all doctors like that – now Melbourne research shows that for mental health Wikipedia is a credible source. Dr Nicola Reavley says Wikipedia can be better than Encyclopedia Britannica and some psych text books.

What’s in a name? Well what you’re called can make a big difference to your life, says some new research… Simon Laham has found easier to pronounce names can do better than harder names (like Barack?)

That TV Series United States of Tara has brought attention to multiple personality disorder….but before you think you may have it, take a nap?
Maybe it’s therapists misinterpreting people who are not getting enough sleep

For the many people who are into dating on the web – how to spot an online liar
Here are the giveaway signs

And news on a drug that may help with Alzheimers.

Wikipedia leads as mental health source

Wikipedia leads as mental health source A Study Shows, Audio, News No Responses »

Feb 172012

When it comes to mental health information Wikipedia is a credible source according to a new study from the University of Melbourne. The often consulted, but sometimes doubted, website is the most highly rated source for accessing information on mental-health related topics.

Researcher Dr Nicola Reavley explained to Bob Hughes what the study found and they went on to talk about mental health among the young. Listen to the interview here.

The researchers assessed a range of on-line and print material on mental health-related topics and found that in the majority of cases, Wikipedia was the most highly rated in most domains.

Content about mental health was extracted from 14 frequently accessed websites, including Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and a psychiatry textbook. Text providing information about depression and schizophrenia was assessed.

The content was rated by experts according to: accuracy, how current the information is, breadth of coverage, referencing and readability. Ratings varied significantly between resources according to topic.

Researcher, Dr Nicola Reavley and her colleagues discovered that the quality of information on depression and schizophrenia on Wikipedia was generally as good as, or better than that provided by centrally controlled websites or psychiatry textbooks.

“We know that people seeking information about mental disorders want real-time answers and assistance with accessing help. The Internet is instant and Wikipedia is often the first stop for people looking for definitions, explanations and information about suggested treatments,” said Dr Reavley.

“The Internet provides extensive information about mental disorders that is accessed by consumers and carers. For some people in need, it is the first stop to the next stage of enquiring about services.”

While there have been controversies about the accuracy of Wikipedia in the past and people are not always sure about trusting it – this study suggests that people can trust it to a reasonable extent.”

Source: University of Melbourne

Seeing Colors in Music, Tasting Flavors in Shapes May Happen in Life’s Early Months

Seeing Colors in Music, Tasting Flavors in Shapes May Happen in Life’s Early Months Brain, Worth Noting No Responses »

Feb 172012

New research shows the cross-wiring of senses, called synesthesia, may be experienced by infants.

By Alan S. Brown, ISNS Contributor
Inside Science News Service

Triangles and circles placed atop different background colors were used as part of an experiment to determine if infants might have synesthesia. Credit: Katie Wagner | UCSD

(ISNS) — Famed violinist Itzhak Perlman sees a deep forest green whenever he plays a B-flat on his Stradivarius’ G string. The A on the E string is red. For Perlman, the connection between music and color is not a metaphor. When he plays an A, he sees red the same way the rest of us see white when we look at snow.

This trait is called synesthesia, and recent research suggests that all humans may have experienced it as infants. For adults, it involves a rare cross-wiring of the brain, so that stimulating one sensory or cognitive pathway automatically and involuntary stimulates another.

“It is not an add-on. Synesthetes experience two sensory stimuli at once,” said Maureen Seaberg, a synesthete who wrote a book called “Tasting the Universe” on the subject.

Nor is synesthesia limited to music and colors. Researchers have identified more than 50 types. Seaberg, for example, has grapheme-color synesthesia, in which each letter of the alphabet has its own distinctive color. Others have ordinal-linguistic personification, where numbers and days of the week have distinct personalities.

Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton tastes words. The word “tomato” tastes lemony to her, while “table” evokes cake. According to Seaberg, word-tasters like Swinton “are the only ones who ever express any discomfort with synesthesia, since not every word tastes like cake.”

Seaberg remembers that as a child, she asked her mother why the letter A was always yellow. Her mother answered that she must have memorized it that way in class.

“That was a pretty good answer for the time, but what was more perplexing was why I saw the days of week and the months in color,” Seaberg recounted.

She asked other adults and quickly realized it was better to remain quiet. “I spent the vast majority of my life keeping it a secret,” Seaberg said.

Synesthesia has been known for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks speculated about it, and so did Isaac Newton. The first medical paper appeared 200 years ago, and it was widely studied over the next 100 years. The rise of behaviorism, which sought to make psychology more scientific by studying measurable behaviors rather than personal experiences, ended those investigations.

Then, in 1980, neurologist Richard Cytowic began studying synesthetes. He predicted that a stimulus that would ordinarily activate one sensory pathway in the brain would light up two areas in synesthetes. Brain imaging in the 1990s proved him right.

Seaberg discovered the name for her trait in a bookstore, when she noticed a very colorful copy of Cytowic’s book, “The Man Who Tasted Shapes.”

“When I started reading the inner flap, I finally had a name for what had been going on all my life,” Seaberg said.

Although only 1-2 percent of the population experiences synesthesia, most researchers in the field believe all infants are synesthetes early in life.

Babies’ neurons begin proliferating wildly as soon as they are born, forming many random connections, explained Karen Dobkins, a professor of psychology at University of California – San Diego.

Within a few months, as infants begin to recognize shapes, sounds, and tastes, they trim away the connections they no longer need. Researchers hypothesize that synesthetes retain some of those early connections.

This hypothesis is not easy to prove. “You can’t ask babies directly if they are seeing colors when they look at shapes,” Dobkins remarked. She and graduate student Katie Wagner developed an experiment to tease out the truth.

First, they created two identical images of black-lined triangles. They reasoned that if the infants truly experienced synesthesia, their minds would automatically color in the triangles, the way some adults color in letters.

They placed the two images side by side, one over a red background and the other over a green background. They showed the images to 15 two-month-olds and measured how long their eye stayed on each image. Then they tried the same experiment using circles instead of triangles.

“If the shape didn’t matter, you would expect their eyes to spend the same amount of time on the red triangles as the red circles,” Dobkins said. Instead, the amount of time varied by 12 to 14 percent, depending on what shape was on the color. The researchers believe the preference was due to the contrast between the background and the colors the infants’ minds perceived inside the shapes.

The difference was greatest in two-month-olds. It faded in three-month-olds and disappeared in eight-month-olds and adults. While the experiment does not prove definitively that two-month-olds experience synesthesia, it offers tantalizing clues about how the brain develops and how this seemingly rare condition might be something we all experienced as infants.

Alan S. Brown is a long-time freelance writer who has written extensively about science, engineering, technology-related businesses and technology policy.

Source: Inside Science

PBDEs linked to mice autism like behaviours

PBDEs linked to mice autism like behaviours Genetics, In Other Research No Responses »

Feb 172012

Mice genetically engineered to be susceptible to autism-like behaviors that were exposed to a common flame retardant were less fertile and their offspring were smaller, less sociable and demonstrated marked deficits in learning and long-term memory when compared with the offspring of normal unexposed mice, a study by researchers at UC Davis has found. The researchers said the study is the first to link genetics and epigenetics with exposure to a flame retardant chemical.

The research was published online today in the journal Human Molecular Genetics. It will be presented during a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) by Janine LaSalle, a professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in the UC Davis School of Medicine and the UC Davis Genome Center.

“This study highlights the interaction between epigenetics and the effects of early exposure to flame retardants,” said Janine LaSalle, the study’s senior author and a researcher affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute. “Our experiments with wild-type and mutant mice indicate that exposure to flame retardants presents an independent risk of neurodevelopmental deficits associated with reduced sociability and learning.”

Epigenetics describes the heritable changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than those in the DNA sequence. One such mechanism is DNA methylation, in which genes are silenced when their activation no longer is required. DNA methylation is essential for normal development. The researchers chose a mouse that was genetically and epigenetically susceptible to social behavioral deficits in order to understand the potential effect of this environmental pollutant on genetically susceptible humans.

LaSalle and her colleagues examined the effects of the chemical BDE-47 (Tetrabromodiphenl ether), a member of the class of flame retardants called polybrominated diphenylethers, or PBDEs. PBDEs have been used in a wide range of products, including electronics, bedding, carpeting and furniture. They have been shown to persist in the environment and accumulate in living organisms, and toxicological testing has found that they may cause liver toxicity, thyroid toxicity and neurodevelopmental toxicity, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. BDE-47 is the PBDE found at highest concentrations in human blood and breast milk, raising concerns about its potential neurotoxic effects during pregnancy and neonatal development.

The research was conducted in the offspring of mice genetically engineered for the autism phenotype found in Rett syndrome, a disorder that occurs primarily in females and causes regression in expressive language, motor skills and social reciprocity in late infancy. The condition affects about 1 in 10,000 children.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of neurodevelopmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral deficits. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that an average of 1 in 110 children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.

Rett syndrome is causally linked to defects in the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 gene MECP2 situated on the X chromosome. Mutations in MECP2 result in a nonfunctional MeCP2 protein, which is required for normal brain development. The researchers evaluated the effects of exposure to BDE-47 on mice genetically engineered to have mutations in MECP2 and their offspring, or pups. The genetically engineered Mecp2 mother mice, or dams, were bred with non-mutant wild-type males. The dams were monitored for 10 weeks — for four weeks prior to conception, three weeks during gestation and three weeks of lactation. They were then compared with a control group of normal, unexposed dams and pups over several generations and hundreds of mice.

The study found that that the weights of the pups of the lactating BDE-47-exposed dams were diminished when compared with the controls, as were their survival rates. To assess the effects of the flame retardant exposure on the pups and their genotypes, the researchers placed them through more than 10 cognitive, social and physical tests.

Female offspring of dams exposed with BDE-47 spent half as much time interacting with another mouse in a 10-minute sociability test compared to controls. The reduced sociability in BDE-47 exposed females corresponded to reduced DNA methylation in females regardless of genotype. In addition, genetic and environmental interaction effects in this study were specifically observed in females.

In a short-term memory test of social novelty, although all mice showed the expected preference for interacting with a novel over a familiar mouse, BDE-47-exposed mutant female mice spent about half as much time interacting with the familiar mouse than their non-mutant littermates. In a long-term memory test of swimming to reach a hidden platform in a cloudy pool, female mice who were both mutant and BDE-47 exposed did not learn to reach the platform faster after fourdays of training. These behavioral changes in social and cognitive learning specifically in the interaction group corresponded to changes in a known epigenetic regulator of DNA methylation in brain, DNA methyltransferase 3a (Dnmt3a).

LaSalle said that the study results are important because better understanding of the epigenetic pathways implicated in social behavior and cognition may lead to improved treatments for autism spectrum disorders.

“While the obvious preventative step is to limit the use and accumulation of PBDEs in our environment, this would likely be a long-term solution,” LaSalle said. “These pollutants are going to be hard to get rid of tomorrow. However, one important preventative that all women could do tomorrow is to start taking prenatal vitamins before becoming pregnant, as these may counteract the toxins in our environment through DNA methylation,” she said.

A study by researchers at UC Davis conducted in 2011 found that women who reported not taking a daily prenatal vitamin immediately before and during the first month of pregnancy were nearly twice as likely to have a child with an autism spectrum disorder as women who did take the supplements — and the associated risk rose to seven times as great when combined with a high-risk genetic make-up.